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Super Metroid vs Super Mario Kart vs The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past vs Donkey Kong Country 2009
Results Round Two Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 Ulti's Analysis This match ended up having a really close fight for second place, but with two major issues. One, Sonic 3 and Doom choking in the first round turned this match into a big SNES clusterfuck and it really took away from how close this was. Two, we already saw this same match like 3 weeks prior and it was clear within minutes we were getting a replay, but with fewer vote totals for Mario Kart and Metroid to work with. But before getting into that, it's worth noting how impressive Link to the Past was here. Even though it was clearly SFFing all three games in the poll, there were still 3 SNES games here to drag it down a bit. It still broke over 50%. This solidified it as the odds-on favorite to make the final from the top half of the bracket along with FF7, especially given we were on track to have 2 Mario games in the quarterfinals along with LTTP and FF7. As for Metroid and Mario Kart, they went out and nearly perfectly repeated every trend from their first round match. So even though the loser of the round 2 rematch was to be eliminated from the contest, this never had the tension that makes close matches so fun. One could even argue this was one of the worst close matches we've ever had. Tell me if any of this sounds familiar: Super Metroid builds up a 550 vote lead for half the night; Mario Kart begins chipping away at 3 a.m. and isn't slowed down until halfway through the DSV when the lead is 130; Metroid somehow wins the second half of the DSV and gets its lead back to 300; Mario Kart wins the early parts of the ASV, but gets inexplicably stalled a bunch and isn't able to tie the match until 7 p.m.; Metroid wins the evening vote and gets its lead back up to 100; Mario Kart makes a last stand, but Metroid wins the second night vote to escape with the match. Even during the parts of Mario Kart's comeback where it looked like this round would be different, there was always the looming feeling that Super Metroid would win it with the second night vote if things were close. Well things were close, and Metroid won to the surprise of no one. This would have been a great first round 1v1 match, but it was uninspired in this format. Match Trends Ngamer's Same Day Analysis Match Prediction I see some extremely high Zelda picks, but I'm not realling feelin' it. Unlike Mario, Zelda hasn't displayed strong blowout potential so far this season, and I'm also thinking that its such an obvious first place against the all-Nintendo competition that people might be throwing their votes elsewhere. Especially if there's a tight battle for 2nd place going on, which I imagine there will be! All in all this looks much more like a Mario 3 situation than what SMW saw today, so if LttP can still manage 50% I'd be quite impressed. Now originally I was thinking that Metroid's dedicated base would do the best job of avoiding the Zelda SFF to allow it a tight victory, but after the series has disappointed time and again in the last month my faith is shaken. And even going back to 2004- heck, DKC nearly held up better against LttP than SM managed! When you factor in how MK64 went to town on Star Fox, I'm forced to push this into "too close to call" territory. Which means its time to employ the tiebreaker, aka the match pic overanalysis! Whoa, perfect look for LttP- everyone loves the master sword, that's a nice sprite pose for Link, and the title image is big and bold. DKC gets another solid pic pretty close to what worked for it last time, but I have to mark it down a notch for Diddy being almost fully covered up by DK. Super Met, eh... I love the very big title, but Samus seems to be extremely susceptible to underperformances when she doesn't look her best, and I think people expect the classic orange suit from her, not this purple super-suit. Lastly SMK- what a nostalgia overload! It's going to be very difficult for anyone who played countless hours of battle mode back in grade school to vote for any of the other three options with a great look like that. Okay, it's settled: * Zelda: A Link to the Past - 49.86% * Super Mario Kart - 19.84% * Super Metroid - 19.80% * Donkey Kong Country - 10.51% Feeling pretty good about this! Next Day Review Hmm, I suppose that's one more knock against same fanbase/same era/same company matches... even when two entrants are clearly neck and neck in strength to the point where the result comes down to the final 15 minutes, watching it is still a good deal less exciting than your Frog/Master Chiefs and StarCraft/Halos of the past. First because the voting base is so similar that there are no massive Day/Night vote swings, but (IMO) even more importantly because fanbases just aren't able to get a good hate going for one another. I mean even if SMK is your favorite game, is it REALLY possible to be spitting venom at a guy who voted a classic like Super Met instead? I don't think so. And where could you even go to rally for either of the choices? Seems no matter what site you hit something like 40% of the voters there would end up picking the other choice. I guess this also partially speaks to why despite having so many "good" polls, its almost impossible for something in the 4way format to be considered a "great" match. But I digress! Pretty good result for LttP, but I'm much more impressed that DKC was able to hang right in there against such tough and (such overlapping) competition. Atta boy DK! 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